Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony Inspired by Frankenstein, the Queen of England, and James Bond

Filmmaker Danny Boyle is already building hype for the 2012 Olympic Games’ opening ceremony, the creative portion of which he’s overseeing in London this summer. According to a new interview with Vogue, the Slumdog Millionaire director explains that viewers will see “quite a lot of Frankenstein” in the reportedly $42.3 million event. For anyone who missed that week in A.P. English, Boyle clarifies, “I mean, we don’t reanimate dead creatures, but we did use Frankenstein as a dry run for a lot of ideas for this.” What will that look like, exactly? If his vision is realized, Boyle is hoping that the ceremony will resemble “more like a cauldron, with all the people hovering over and around you.”

Earlier this year, it was revealed that the theme for the night’s spectacle would be “The Isles of Wonder,” an homage to William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Participants in the event will reportedly include the Queen, Duran Duran, Snow Patrol, and 12,000 performers, including dancers, drummers, acrobats, nurses (!?), and “imitators of historically important Britons.” Daniel Craig has also been summoned to tape a short film for the ceremony at Buckingham Palace in character as James Bond. If seeing so many worlds—royal, classic literature, 80s heartthrob, nursing—overlap isn’t your thing, tune in to the closing ceremony, which will feature a roster of more headliner-type musical acts (apologies, Snow Patrol), said to include the Rolling Stones, Coldplay, Adele, Paul McCartney, Elton John, and the equally venerable musical entity, the Spice Girls. The 2012 Summer Olympics begin on July 27.